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Space, place and realism: Red road and the gendering of a cinematic history

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journal contribution
posted on 2023-06-09, 00:52 authored by Sue Thornham
John Hill has described the way in which the male-centred narratives of British ‘working-class films’ of the 1980s and 1990s mobilise the idea of working-class community as ‘a metaphor for the state of the nation’. Writing on films of the same period by women directors, Charlotte Brunsdon deems it more difficult to see these films as representations ‘of the nation’. There are, she writes, ‘real equivocations in the fit between being a woman and representing Britishness’. This article explores this issue, arguing that the history of British cinema to which Hill’s chapter contributes is not only bound up with a particular sense of British national identity but founded on a particular conception, and use, of space and place. Taking Andrea Arnold’s Red Road (2006) as its case study, it asks what it is about this sense of space and place that excludes women as subjects, rendering their stories outside and even disruptive of the tradition Hill describes. Finally, drawing on feminist philosophy and cultural geography, it suggests ways in which answering these questions might also help us think about the difficult questions raised by Jane Gaines in a number of articles, around how we might think together feminist film theory and film history.

History

Publication status

  • Published

File Version

  • Published version

Journal

Feminist Media Histories

ISSN

2373-7492

Publisher

University of California Press

Issue

2

Volume

2

Page range

133-154

Department affiliated with

  • Media and Film Publications

Full text available

  • Yes

Peer reviewed?

  • Yes

Legacy Posted Date

2016-04-12

First Open Access (FOA) Date

2016-04-12

First Compliant Deposit (FCD) Date

2016-04-12

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